Every era of computing eventually exposes the assumptions that made the last era work. For decades, networking succeeded because it was mostly identity agnostic. Packets moved because they had addresses. Routers and switches forwarded traffic because the network knew where something was going, not necessarily who or what was behind it.

That model helped build the internet and modern enterprises. But it is not enough for the era we are entering now.

Today, far more than employees touch infrastructure. Workloads and automation act continuously, while AI agents can now make decisions at machine speed. The identity problem is no longer confined to a person logging into an application. It extends to every actor that can reach something valuable.

To tackle the evolving complexities of modern identity management, Cisco and Teleport are announcing a strategic partnership centered on deep technology integration, licensing, and investment.  As the largest strategic investor, Cisco is reinforcing its commitment to accelerating the next phase of Teleport’s evolution. Together, we are empowering organizations to transition from fragmented, credential-reliant workflows to a unified model of ‘Infrastructure Identity,’ a robust, cryptographic foundation that anchors secure identity to every human and machine action across the enterprise.

Identity Has Become the Control Plane

Security leaders have made real progress on workforce identity. Infrastructure, however, has outpaced the systems built to protect it. Its identities are scattered across each environment and operational tool, leaving security teams with fragments of the story. They may see that a connection occurred, but not enough context to judge the action or trust the actor behind it.

Traditional privileged access management addressed part of this problem by vaulting and rotating passwords. Yet when the approved route slows urgent work, operators find another way in. The workaround restores speed, but it also restores standing access and leaves durable secrets outside the intended controls. Meanwhile, the vault itself becomes a high-value target. The problem is not missing features. It is a model that loses protection precisely when people route around it.

What We Mean by Infrastructure Identity

Infrastructure Identity starts with a simple principle: there should be no anonymous computing in critical infrastructure.

Infrastructure Identity turns that principle into an operating model. Trust is established for the actor and carried into each connection, while privilege is issued only for the task and expires with its access window. Static credentials and standing access give way to cryptographic identity and short-lived permissions, creating accountability without asking operators to trade speed for control.

The distinction matters. A vault asks who may use a powerful secret. Infrastructure Identity starts with the actor and evaluates whether a specific action should be allowed now. Cisco will partner with Teleport to broker and record the connection using short-lived cryptographic access, removing long standing secrets and broad access. This is not a better vault. It is a move from credential custody to identity-native access.

Why This Matters Now

The enterprise identity surface was already growing before AI. Cloud and automation created more machine actors with access to critical systems. AI now accelerates both sides of the problem: it introduces autonomous agents that can act across infrastructure, while giving attackers the speed to discover and exploit identity gaps that teams once had time to find themselves. Ambiguous identity, broad access, and standing privilege are no longer background risk. They are active paths to critical systems.

The stakes rise again as AI moves beyond software. In robots and industrial systems, a compromised or overprivileged actor can affect the physical world before a human has time to intervene. Infrastructure Identity is therefore not just an access-control issue. It is a foundation for operational resilience.

Why Cisco and Teleport

Cisco has always operated where the enterprise connects. That position matters because the network sees connections, while identity reveals the actors behind them. Teleport completes the picture by replacing secret-based access with short-lived, identity-native access that leaves a clear session record. Together, we can bring identity context closer to where action happens.

Our first use case is privileged access for network and infrastructure administrators. Picture an engineer entering a maintenance window. Instead of retrieving a standing credential from a vault—or using a path outside it—the engineer verifies identity and requests only the access needed for that task. Teleport brokers and records the session, then ends the privilege with the access window. The engineer never receives a reusable credential that can outlive the task.

Cisco brings the infrastructure and network context to make that path more useful and, over time, easier to enforce. The secure route cannot be a detour. It must be the simplest way to get legitimate work done.

What Customers Should Expect

Network and infrastructure teams should see the impact first. Operators get a faster path to the resources they are authorized to use, without collecting secrets or detouring through access methods built for another era. Instead of granting standing privilege because the approved process is too slow, teams can issue short-lived access for the work at hand.

Security teams gain the context to trace an access decision through the resulting session and understand what changed. That shortens incident reconstruction and helps teams contain the blast radius.

AI teams can bring agents into the same governance model from the start. Agents should not inherit broad, unmanaged access simply because they need to move quickly. They should receive only the privilege required for the task, with every action attributable.

The Next Chapter of Trusted Infrastructure

The next decade of infrastructure will be defined by more than people logging into systems. Human access will be only one part of the story. Autonomous software will act on our behalf, and physical AI will carry some of those decisions into the real world. Trust cannot depend on credentials that can be shared or persist in a vault. It must be established continuously and carried out with the action.

That is the promise of Infrastructure Identity: no anonymous computing, no unmanaged privilege, and no forced tradeoff between stronger security and operational speed. Identity must become part of the infrastructure itself, following every actor wherever it connects and acts. And once everything has an identity, that unlocks the opportunity to have an identity-aware network that brings actor context beyond IP address, for better visibility and identity-based policy enforcement at the deepest layer.

Infrastructure is becoming the system of action for the AI era. Identity must become the foundation of trust.